


Empty Nesters

by Wolkemesser



Category: Magic: The Gathering
Genre: Flash Fic, Ixalan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-07
Updated: 2018-07-07
Packaged: 2019-06-06 13:10:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15195467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolkemesser/pseuds/Wolkemesser
Summary: A flash fan fiction I did based of a WotC prompt!





	Empty Nesters

“Strong laws are key to a long-lasting civilization.”

Azor stretched out upon the high dais and idly batted at one of the statues perched on the edge. “They are what allow a society to rise from any disaster like a phoenix from the ashes.”

Kuatzli paused, quill suspended above the parchment. Most of what the sphinx said was quite dull, and unfit for song, but this sounded interesting. Something to make his appointment as the lawbringer’s scribe worthwhile.

“What…what is a phoenix?”

***

Droplets splash off my head. Water runs in steaming rivulets down my sides.

I don’t mind the rain. I love the music it makes as it patters off of the trees and the golden city. I love the trails of vapor that peel away from the stony skin that keeps my flames safe and crackling.

To the north, south, and west, I know my siblings are similarly cozy at their posts.

It’s been many years since we were born. Since Father shaped us from jade with wind and water. Since Mother filled us with life borrowed from the sun itself. They loved each other then, and all of Ixalan bloomed with their love.

That was long ago. Before the troublemaker came, bearing his false sun and setting our parents against each other.

It’s lonely without mother and father, but I hate it when they fight.

All they ever do now is fight.

We wanted none of it. We decided that we did not care to be dragged into their petty squabbles for earth and water. That if they were going to fight, they could do it somewhere else.

They are not allowed in our golden home any longer. The troublemaker saw to that. Now he sulks in the depths of our golden home, but that suits us just fine.

We’ve come to enjoy the silence.

When father wanders too close along his rivers and streams, we boil the waters to turn him back. When mother comes with her new children, the scaled orphans of the jungles, we blaze across the sky and set the creatures to fright, invoking ancestral memories of fires that came from the sky to slay their primevals many millennia ago.

Lately there have been others. Intruders not so easily scared away. These ones have slain my brothers and sisters on occasion. Sent us plummeting from the skies. The gold-clad ghouls who float on the air and smell of burning roses when they catch fire. The pirates with their screaming balls of metal.

Not that any of them have taken the city. We each reignite in time, and ignite our intruders thereafter.

Speaking of which…

I hear the pirate song drift over the water as their little tub-boats come into sight. Perhaps forty or fifty, well into their ale, and mostly harmless.

Still, they must leave.

My stone skin cracks. Fiery tendrils weave and fracture, swelling into chest, wings, and talons.

***

“Ah.” Azor arced his back and stood upon his forepaws. “They are creatures from other planes. Immortal birds that die, but rise again in a perfectly ordered cycle of flame.”

“Sounds like a sunbird.”

Hacama had entered the chamber. The stoneshaper was holding a new totem under her arm. “I was told you requested a new paperweight-” She stopped short. “Lawbringer, where did you find that?”

Azor was still batting at the stone statue. “This? Hmmm…I found it out in one of the lakes and I thought it might suit my purposes. The red is all wrong, though.” Azor batted the owl-shaped stone a little closer to the ledge.

“Lawbringer! Do not-”

With a final tap the sphinx knocked the statue from the dais. Time seemed to slow as it spun end over end. Kuatzli hadn’t noticed the fire in its eyes. A device to warm the room, perhaps?

The statue hit the floor, and Kuatzli caught the briefest glimpse of an owl made of embers before Hacama tackled him to the ground, and the room filled with heat.

***

The explosion of rebirth carries me far aloft. High enough that my form blots the sun and casts shadows upon the pirate boats.

My wings fold, and I dive. As I approach the surface of the water I spread my feathers and swoop low above the lake. Steam billows up in my wake.

The pirates are shouting. Some are trying to paddle their boats away. Some have already dived into the water. Others, braver or more ale-addled than the others, wave swords and axes in my direction.

Just as I am upon them, my wings spread wide, and I stop short. Searing winds whips across the lake, capsizing their boats. On either side of the water the autumn tree leaves ignite and rush from the branches in a rising curtain of embers.

Even the most foolhardy among the pirates flee, swimming away.

That is three incursions in as many days now.

Change is coming to Orazca. For the city’s sake, and the sake of the peace it has brought my siblings, I hope the change does not take.

***

Half of Kuatzli’s parchments were reduced to ash, but he hardly cared. He had never seen a sunbird ignite from up close. Now there was something to write a poem about.

“L-lawbringer, does that compare to the phoenixes of the other worlds?”

Kuatzli and Hacama both turned toward the dais in time to see Azor leap down and pounce through the now-singed doorway, in hot pursuit of the sunbird. His paws skidded on the smooth golden tiles as he bounded out of sight.

Kuatzli started to stand and nearly slipped on spilled parchment. Hacama took his hand and pulled him up to his feet. Kuatzli leaned on her a moment, resting his brow against her shoulder, feeling the muscles slide beneath her smooth blue-green scales.

“An inscrutable creature, our mighty lawbringer is…”

Hacama laughed. “You can say ‘troublesome.’ Poetry is all well and good, but some creatures deserve simpler words.”

 

 

“Empty Nesters” is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.


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